Triptych
by Scribbler
Summary: After the fall of Radiant Garden, survivors Leon, Yuffie, Aerith, Tifa and Cid try to make a new life in Traverse Town. Easier said than done; especially when Cloud, the friend they thought had died, reappears unexpectedly and needs their help.
1. Ghost and Failure

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**Disclaimer****: **Irrevocably not mine.

**A/N****: **This is the sequel to _The Most Dangerous Game_, a prequel fic that dealt with the fall of Radiant Garden and the strange mentor/pupil relationship between Leon and Xigbar when they were still Squall and Braig. This fic was requested by Thien as the prize for winning the Scrib!Fic Fanart Contest 2009. Sorry it took so long, but I hope you enjoy it anyway.

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_**Triptych**_

© Scribbler, August 2009.

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**1. The Ghost and the Failure**

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Could you become a ghost without actually dying?

Hardly the best question to ask when running at breakneck speed along a cliff path – emphasis on breakneck. One wrong step here could lead to a long drop with a short stop on the jagged rocks below. There was a reason it was called Devil's Peak. In actual fact, it was a really _bad_ question to be asking, because not only was this the steepest cliff outside Traverse Town, it was also twilight and raining, which made the journey extra dangerous.

Scree kept coming loose whenever Leon's feet hit the ground. More than once he had to throw out a hand to grab at the wall beside him as he pounded towards the summit. Yet Leon, usually so cautious, barely registered the danger. He was too busy debating two great riddles of his life: was it possible for a person to die soul-first, and would he make it in time?

He couldn't shake the misgiving he was already too late. He couldn't blame Aerith for keeping him – neither of them could have known they'd come back to an empty house – but there was always the compunction to blame himself. Once just a vague impulse that came with being a teenager, now it was second nature for his mind to seek out the ways that he personally could have prevented bad things from happening. It was disturbing how many times he succeeded in convincing himself he was a screw-up.

He breathed a sigh of relief when he crested the rise and saw a figure highlighted against the skyline. The last streaks of sunset sliced the sky, just visible through the rain. The figure turned at Leon's approach, but there was no clue whether he'd been waiting specifically, or just happened to still be here.

There was a time Leon would have known. There was a time he wouldn't have had to doubt himself. They used to be friends – best friends, even if he'd been skipped ahead in training, moved to the social circles of the older class at a time when that sort of thing still mattered.

Except had it? Had it ever really been an issue? Not between them. Maybe not in any way. Leon remembered being hazed by the older boys, who were jealous of his talents and his age. Just two years between them, but it had made such a difference at the time. It was embarrassing to be beaten by a pipsqueak. It was humiliating to know you'd never beat the child prodigy. It was suicide to fraternise with it.

He had never fitted in. It sounded lame now, when he was nearly twenty and had coped with far worse than bullying, but for a long time that fact had defined him. He was the perfect cadet, but he was antisocial and found it difficult to interact with others outside training exercises. Teachers called him a machine. Students called him a freak. He recalled long evenings alone, reading up on combat theory in the library, or putting in enough extra hours at the shooting range that even the dumbest canon-fodder recruit realised he was chalking up three times anybody else's quota – and making them all look bad in comparison. He was the keen freak – teacher's pet, although that title had taken on a whole new meaning when Radiant Garden fell, and Leon realised the unpleasant truths of the adults running his life.

Cloud had never cared. Not in the way the others did. He was the first to treat Leon like a regular kid – the first in his whole _life_. Even his father had never done that. Captain Leonheart had wanted his son to succeed, and Leon had wanted to make his father proud. They had each genuinely thought that would make the other happy, but in the end all the pushing and striving to be the best had done was to orchestrate a situation where one died and the other was consigned to a slow death by a thousand paper-cut regrets.

Standing on the cliff now, Leon was transported back to the day her first met Cloud Strife. Not the most auspicious of beginnings: he had been trussed up and left to free himself in a pile of dung behind the stables at the time. He recalled how he had just about got one hand free when someone leaned over him and didn't try to retie it.

"Are you okay?"

"You're not seriously asking me that, are you?"

The boy had flushed, and then wordlessly tried to untie the knots Leon's struggles had pulled tight.

"There's a knife," Leon had said eventually, tired and sick of the stink. Maybe it was the fumes making him careless. There was no other way he would've revealed the weapon while he was in such a precarious position, especially to a stranger. The boys who had left him there had done worse before, and there was always the chance they could have recruited this unassuming-looking boy to take the rap in exchange for leaving him alone. "In my boot."

"Cadets aren't allowed to carry weapons outside class."

"I know. Use it to cut me free."

The boy had paused, and then tentatively removed the switchblade. It was decorated with Griever, the lion-head emblem of the Leonheart family crest. After cutting through the restraints he had stared at it, resting in his open palm. Leon could easily have snatched it away, but apparently he either didn't realise or didn't care.

"You're Squall Leonheart."

"Yeah. So?"

"People talk about you a lot."

"So?" A serrated edge of defiance had crept into Leon's voice. If this kid wanted to make something of it, then let him try.

The boy had squinted at him. "They never said you liked chocobos so much."

The raucous squawk of the giant riding birds echoed around them from their stalls. Leon had just stared at the boy, trying to read the slur he was no doubt giving. Yet the clear blue eyes staring back at him had been so painfully sincere and honest it was impossible to think they _could_ be anything less.

"I don't."

"Shame. They're faster than horses and way more intelligent. You should try riding one sometime."

And that had been it: their friendship, begun amidst the shit and squawking of enormous glorified chickens.

And Leon had never been more grateful for anything in his life.

Cloud, unlike most boys in the Royal Guard Training Programme, wasn't originally from Radiant Garden. His home was a tiny mountain village in the North where snow was the norm and people prayed for the thaw so they could get out of their front doors instead of climbing through windows onto the top of the latest drift.

"I was amazed when I arrived in the Autumn semester to tryout for the programme," he said once. "Lowland winters are so _mild_."

Leon, who had felt like his fingers and toes were in danger of dropping off from September to March, just grunted.

Cloud had come down from his village with another girl, and through her Leon learned the reality behind his misconception that women were weaker than men and needed protecting. Tifa was to the term 'helpless maiden' what 'a bit warm' was to volcanoes, and 'slightly grouchy' when used as a description of Captain Cid Highwind.

"And _don't_ you forget it!" she'd snapped after knocking him on his ass for the third time in hand-to-hand combat.

Tifa was two years behind him, in the female counterpart of Cloud's class, but the first time she challenged Leon to a fight she wiped the floor with him. It had felt … kind of good, actually; like someone had given him permission not to be perfect all of a sudden. He had never told Commander Braig about it. Instinct had informed him that his mentor would have been displeased to hear his student was not only accepting challenges from lower-classmen, but getting whooped by them despite his status as a prodigy. Leon didn't really get to know Tifa properly until Cloud was compulsorily 'recruited' by Commander Dilan as a law enforcement cadet.

The thought made Leon gag now. Recruitment? No. That was the code used to cover up all those who went missing. How could he have been so _blind_? How could he have not realised Cloud _hadn't_ just found better friends in his new training programme?He has disappeared because Leon was close to him. If he hadn't befriended Leon, Cloud would have been okay. Maybe. Better than now, at least. Even dying in that final battle would've been better than now.

Their friendship had been what got Leon through as a teen. Cloud made him feel like he wasn't a freak. At first, he had seemed in awe of Leon's talents. Then he was just impressed. Eventually he took them for granted, which made Leon feel better than any amount of praise. Cloud treated him like any normal kid, and if he hid behind Leon slightly when bullies were around, Leon could handle that. It was a small price to pay for his first true friend, which was why it had stung so much when Cloud moved dorms and seemed to sever all contact with his old friends.

Were they still friends now? Leon studied the hard line of Cloud's jaw and the even harder blue of his eyes. He barely recognised the boy who had laughed when he tried to give mountain-style chocobo-riding lessons and Leon kept falling off.

It had been years, yes, but the features were still the same. Cloud's face was still recognisable, and he still had that stupid hair like the back end of an electrocuted chocobo, but he was different underneath now. He had grown up … wrong. There was no other way to put it. It oozed off him like slime, the impression that somewhere along the way something had gotten into the mix that made up Cloud Strife and made him change in ways he wasn't supposed to.

Leon gritted his teeth.

"You followed me?" Cloud didn't sound surprised. He didn't sound interested at all. Again, so very wrong for him. He had always been the inquisitive but shy one, while Leon was the stoic tactician who stood back and assessed every situation for hazards before saying a word.

Since the moment Cloud turned up out of the blue, startling everyone with his sudden and unexpected return from the dead, he had said everything in the same flat monotone that made it impossible to tell whether he was happy, sad, frustrated, or something else entirely. Gone was the positive, oh-so-earnest boy Leon had known. What was left was a Changeling, who looked at his friends like _they _were the strangers. A giant signpost in Cloud's head couldn't have pointed it out any clearer: _something went wrong here, and is still going wrong now, right this second, before your very eyes, and you can't do anything to stop it_.

"You're not leaving," Leon said tightly.

"You can't stop me," Cloud replied, not with defiance, but quiet certainty that even if he tried, Leon wouldn't be able to do a damn thing. The balance of power between them had shifted from when they were cadets. Even more disturbing, though, was the look in his eyes – despair and anger and determination so strong it made Leon's teeth hurt, all overlaid with the kind of deadness you'd expect to find in catatonia victims.

Disturbing, yes, but not quite as disturbing as all the things Cloud _hadn't_ told him: like where he'd been in the years since Radiant Garden was razed, where his wing and claw had come from, how he had come to possess a giant sword wrapped in used bandages, or whose blood had been on them before this damnable rain washed it off.

Or why he was chasing General Sephiroth.

Leon's mind snagged as if on a rusty nail. The last time he'd seen Cloud was when both he and Sephiroth were being absorbed by magic made from pure darkness. It had seemed to eat them alive, along with innumerable actual dead bodies. Sephiroth had screamed like a soul in torment as those bodies seemed to be absorbed right into him. If it had been awful for even a war-hardened general like him, what had it done to an inexperienced boy like Cloud?

Killed him, Leon had thought until now.

For a long time he had been forced to accept that his friend and Resplendia's foremost warrior were dead. It wasn't true, he knew now, but perhaps reality was worse. Something had happened to Cloud that day, and also in the time before that, when he was missing but his friends hadn't realised. He had been tortured, that much was clear, and left for dead in a cell beneath the castle, before being accidentally caught up in the battle to kill Sephiroth.

Could you die in your mind and heart but still keep going in your body? If it was possible, Cloud was the proof. Against expectation, he lived for nothing but finding and defeating Sephiroth now. He wouldn't explain why he thought of the man as an enemy when they'd both been through an experience that should have given them common ground to be allies. Leon suspected it was to do with the years that had elapsed since the end of Radiant Garden – the time that earned a blank stare from Cloud whenever anyone asked about them. Not even Tifa had been able to turn him back from this fixated stranger he'd become, and she'd known Cloud since they were practically still in diapers.

_You can't stop me._

"I can try," Leon said, setting his feet and bringing Lionheart to bear.

Cloud stared at the gunblade. Nothing new entered his eyes, but he said softly, "You still use that?"

"You're not leaving," Leon said again. "I won't let you."

"I don't need your permission to do anything anymore, Squall."

He flinched. "I told you before, it's -"

"Leon now. I know. But you're still using that gunblade, so maybe it's not."

"Shut up." Leon's words were frosty. _No_, he told himself, _don't be aggressive. You'll just drive him away faster. Make him realise he __**has **__to stay._

"You repainted it," Cloud went on, unperturbed. "You renamed it. You put it in a new town and added your family crest, but it's still the same underneath." Cloud looked him straight in the eye. "Squall."

Leon swore he heard one of his own molars crack. "Where have you _been_, Cloud?" he asked for the hundredth time.

"Looking for the one who reflects all the darkness in me."

"That doesn't even make any sense!"

"And changing your name because you feel ashamed does?"

"More than dropping back into our lives only to leave again five minutes later."

"I've been here three days."

"Because when you landed you were beat up so bad it took Aerith days to fix you. She said you have a complex physiognomy now, more than an average human body."

Cloud blinked. "And the bat wing wasn't your first clue?"

For a second Leon dared to hope this was a hint of the old Cloud shining through. The old Cloud wasn't above making jokes or sarcasm. The old Cloud would have stayed longer. The old Cloud wouldn't have …

Wouldn't have been in that dungeon, cast aside like all the other bodies, if he hadn't been so closely connected to Leon. That really was why Cloud was the way he was now – because he had been Leon's friend, and the unknown forces at work in the background of Leon's life couldn't allow him to have such a close connection, so it had been ripped away, with Cloud's humanity along for the ride. Cloud was collateral damage, and that fact was bitterest of all.

_This is my fault_, Leon had thought countless times over the past three days, as he used to when he thought Cloud's death could be laid at his feet. _He shouldn't have even been there. He shouldn't have …_

Cloud turned away.

"What part of 'you're not leaving' don't you understand? You're not leaving us again, Cloud. We finally got you back. No way in hell we're letting you go again so soon."

"You don't get a choice in the matter," Cloud replied without looking around. "This isn't your quest. It's mine."

"Quest? _Quest_?" Leon took a step forward. "This isn't a game, Cloud! We thought you were _dead_. We _grieved_ you. You can't expect us to go through that again. It's not fair. It's not fair, and it's not right. Are you really going to do that to Tifa?"

"Tifa?" Cloud sounded untroubled, as if it really _hadn't_ occurred to him that she might want him to stay.

"The girl you grew up with! The girl you used to have a crush on when we were cadets! Don't you remember? She mourned you, Cloud, and she blamed herself for not realising you needed us when Dilan took you away. She spent all this time thinking your death was her fault, and it cut pieces out of her every time. You didn't see it. You weren't here. She's spent all this time getting back on her feet after the stuff she saw that day. Don't put her back there. Don't make her mourn you again. You can't be that vindictive." Leon blinked, not sure if he was really talking about Tifa anymore.

"Can't I?" Cloud actually _chuckled_. It was so unexpected it sent a chill down Leon's spine that had nothing to do with being soaked to his skin. "And you?"

Those thoughts couldn't be allowed to blur his resolve now. Leon tightened his grip. "I'm going to shoot you if you try to leave."

"You won't."

"How do you know? You've already pointed out we're different than we used to be."

"Not you. Not that way. You won't hurt me. You can't."

"What makes you so sure? Desperate men do desperate things, Cloud."

"You're not that desperate."

"_I lost everything_!" It came out a shout that was almost a scream, which gurgled away to a dull growl in his throat and chest, nestled against his heart. "And I couldn't save any of it, so don't you _dare_ tell me I'm not fucking _desperate_. My father died. Was _murdered_. People I thought I could trust … they killed him. And you. I thought _you _had died at their hands too. I spent all this time hating them for that, when you were _alive _somewhere playing catch-me-if-you-can with General Sephiroth."

Cloud's mouth became a thin line.

_Damn it. Yeah, bring that up and fling it at him. Smart move, Leon. _"I'm not letting you walk out of my life this time, Cloud. Not without a fight. You're my friend. Or at least," he said bitterly, "you used to be."

It was an invitation for Cloud to say they still were. Leon waited with a strange thickness in his throat. The tension sat heavy in his stomach, making him feel sick. So much of his life had gone wrong. The level of loss he'd undergone would have destroyed a lesser personality. This final fragment might still do it. to have something taken away is actually far easier than to have it returned, see it's broken, and then lose it again before you can fix it.

Cloud looked over his shoulder. "You'll let me go."

"No, I -"

"Because if it was Commander Braig, _you'd_ go in a heartbeat. You wouldn't even think about it. And I'd let _you _go." He narrowed his eyes. "Deny it. Deny that you'd follow if you were in my position and Braig was in Sephiroth's."

Leon opened his mouth, but no words came out. Just hearing that name was enough to seize up his throat with fury, grief and a million of the other emotions that had inundated him since his mentor helped unleash the Heartless on a castle full of innocents, betrayed them all, and proved himself a pitiless murderer of his own people before Leon's eyes. Commander Braig was in a huge proportion of Leon's memories as a cadet, but he was in a larger proportion of his nightmares.

Cloud gave a single curt nod. "I thought so." He took a run at the cliff edge and threw himself into empty space.

Leon started forward, but heard the rubbery _thwack_ of that unnatural wing extending. Cloud banked upwards, coming up diagonal to compensate for the weight of his sword, facing away from the cliff. It was impossible to fly on only one wing. It was impossible to carry a sword that big. It was impossible to return from the dead, or survive even a fragment of what Cloud had survived with your sanity still intact.

He didn't look back.

Leon rushed to the edge, heedless of the danger, and shouted, "You have to come back! You don't get to just fuck off like this, Cloud! You have to come back, whether or not you find Sephiroth, or else I'll find you and drag you back by your hair. You can't just expect us to forget you're alive now that we know. You're not leaving us forever, you hear me? Cloud! _Cloud!_"

But Cloud was too far away to hear him over the rain. If, indeed, he had been listening at all. His new laser-like intensity was focussed exclusively on Sephiroth and whatever unspoken reasons he had for finding him.

Leon realised his hands were trembling – not with cold or fear, but with pure rage. They were bunched into fists, one around Lionhart's hilt, the other a tight ball of leather, bone and straining tendons. His elbows were locked. He had to make a conscious effort to bend them. The moment he did, he surprised himself by raising the gunblade and hurling it into the ground.

It was a stupid thing to do. The point buried itself deep. This close to the crumbling edge, it could easily have caused the ground the break away under him.

He didn't care. For a few seconds he wasn't himself; he was just a roiling ball of pain, anger, frustration, and a profound sense of betrayal.

The betrayal always welled up, like pus from an old wound, whenever the subject of Commander Braig arose. Leon had lost his father, his mentor, his best friend, his home, his future, and his sense of self-worth in less than an hour, and had been living with the ramifications of that ever since. He would never be able to forgive Braig or the other traitors for their actions. It was one of the few constants he had left.

But this time the betrayal wasn't just about the Commander.

"You let me think you were dead," he hissed at the speck that was Cloud. "You can cross from world to world. You weren't stuck in one place. You could've found us. You could've let us know you were alive." Water dripped off his nose and plastered his hair to his head, revealing the dents in his skull he'd gained from his training and that final battle. "You have to let me help you now. You _have _to. I …" He choked on the words, but there was nobody else around to hear them. "I don't have anything else left that I can do to make up for … I can't make amends otherwise. I've been trying with the girls, and … but it's not working. I don't _feel _it. And I have to make amends. I have to make amends for not being able to … for not seeing before it was too … I was _right there_ and I still couldn't do anything. All those people … the whole Garden ... my dad …"

He shook his head. He wasn't supposed to be angry at Cloud after Cloud had been through so much already. Cloud was damaged, just like they all were, but his brokenness showed on the outside, and for some reason that made Leon interminably angry with him.

"Cloud, you _bastard_. What else am I supposed to do? How else can I make up for not being able to save you the first time around? For not being able to save _anyone_?"

"You saved me."

Leon whirled.

"Not that I actually remember a whole lot of it," said Yuffie. "But Aerith told me the story." She cocked her head to one side at him. "She was worried about you coming up here alone."

"So she sent you?" He didn't bother keeping the incredulity from his voice.

Yuffie blew a raspberry. "Of course not. She doesn't know I'm here. She went to look for Tifa, who's gonna kick your butt for being all weepy up here on your own."

Aerith and Tifa had been friends before everything, but Aerith had barely known Cloud in Radiant Garden. They'd become acquainted during time spent with the healers after getting beaten up so often, but you couldn't really call that friendship – although the old Cloud probably would have. Cloud was eternally accepting and so friendly because he'd grown up being picked on. He understood what it was like to be bullied because you were different. He had endured it all his life in his home village, and had never judged Leon for being the top student, the best fighter in all the Royal Guard cadets, and yet still being trounced by his classmates.

The tendons in Leon's hands twanged.

"Go away, Yuffie."

"No."

"Yuffie -"

"You can't order me around. You're not the boss of me just because you're older."

The urge to lash out almost overwhelmed him. He blinked, shocked at himself. Yuffie wasn't so young she wanted to be carried everywhere, but she was still young enough that the urge to hit her made him disgusted at himself. Her spindly limbs were like toothpicks, and her wide dark eyes stared at him through the rain.

"He's gone, isn't he?" she asked.

"Yeah." Leon stared at the sky, empty save for falling raindrops. "I couldn't …" He shook his head. What was he doing, unburdening to an eight year old? "Never mind."

"You couldn't make him stay," Yuffie finished the sentence for him. "I don't think anyone could have. I never met him before now, but Cloud is all 'grr' and 'argh' about that Sephiroth character. I don't think even tying him down and drugging him would've stopped him if he really waned to go."

"Mrrf."

"Besides, haven't you, like, wondered why he was even here in the first place?"

"Huh?"

"If he's chasing this Sephiroth, and he came here when he didn't know we'd be in this world, maybe it's no wonder he wants to leave so bad. Maybe he's trying to protect us from this guy if he's so mega-super-special-with-whipped-cream BAD." Yuffie shrugged, linking her hands behind her and rocking back on her heels. "Or not. Maybe Cloud's just embarrassed he's not such a looker anymore. What would I know? I'm just a kid, right?"

Leon stared at her. Yuffie was many things, but 'just a kid' had never been one of them. He remembered first pulling her down off the pagoda roof in Radiant Garden, her slapping him with her open palms, only to declare she intended to marry him someday when they reached the ground. He remembered the way she'd overcome her nightmares in Traverse Town, even though she was so much younger than the rest of them, and the way she'd decided to honour her dead father by becoming the 'greatest-ninja-ever-you-see-if-she-didn't-so-nyer'. He also remembered the pranks she liked to pull on the rest of them, cackling as she made flour bombs, balanced buckets of water on doors, and secreted whoopee cushions on chairs before dinner, as if they had anything resembling a normal life now.

He looked once more at the last spot he'd seen Cloud, thoughts writhing like a basket of overturned snakes.

"Squaaaall, you're ignoring meeee!" Yuffie whined.

"It's Leon," he replied grimly. "C'mon. Let's get out of this rain."

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_To Be Continued …_

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	2. Guilty, Caring and Responsible

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**2. The Guilty, the Caring and the Responsible**

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Tifa threw things into a backpack. She wasn't sure what she'd need – hadn't really had time to plan. This was the very definition of 'making it up as you go along'.

She wasn't letting Cloud go again.

She couldn't stop him. She knew that. Cloud was way stronger than her now, and held himself the way his gentle nature had never allowed while they were cadets. It was in the slant of his shoulders, the looseness of his knees, and the way he always made sure his back was facing the wall: Cloud stood like a warrior now.

Tifa used to stand like that, before tragedy and despair made her stoop and hold herself like a victim instead. She'd always been better at hand-to-hand combat than him thanks to her self-defence training with Master Zangan in Nibelheim. It was actually on her sensei's recommendation that she'd left the village to go to Radiant Garden in the first place.

"You have talent, Tifa," he'd said. "You shouldn't waste it here, hidden away where it does nobody any good. You're far beyond the level of just defending yourself against muggers and things."

"But what would I _do_ there? What _could_ I do?"

"What couldn't you?"

"I don't understand what you mean, sir."

"Think about it a while. Sleep on it. You'll figure it out."

She'd thought and slept and cogitated until she was blue in the face, and still couldn't figure out what she'd be going to Radiant Garden for, other than to please Master Zangan. She agreed to go when he insisted it would be good for her, but fretted about making the right choice once she got there.

Cloud had followed her, or so she'd thought. As it turned out, he'd been marching to the beat of his own drum and it just happened to sound a lot like hers.

It was weird to think she'd never really spoken to him until then, though they'd counted each other as friends in that distant, childish way that meant they actually only knew of each other and had waved hello once or twice. Only when Cloud announced he was going to Radiant Garden to join the Royal Guard cadets did Tifa realise he wasn't actually following her at all. Her leaving had just given him the opportunity to act on feelings he'd had for a long time: that there was more to life than Nibelheim, where his absent father and his mother's shady past had always made his life difficult. Cloud was striking out on his own to prove he was worth something.

"I want to be able to protect people," he said when Tifa asked him why he'd chosen the Royal Guards.

"Then wouldn't you be better off training as a law enforcer?"

"Maybe," he'd conceded. "But I really want to be a Royal Guard."

"Why?"

"They're the best of the best. Only the most excellent candidates get in, and only the crème de la crème graduate at the end. I want to be that good. Then _nobody _can say anything about me." His chin had stuck out with stubborn resolve. "I won't be coming back to Nibelheim until I've graduated. That's a promise."

"Not even to visit your mom?"

"She understands."

Tifa had leaned forward, sitting on the well on the outskirts of town, and wrapped her arms around her shins. She had wished her own father was an understanding as Cloud's mom, or even as Cloud himself. You could be who you were meant to be around Cloud. He wouldn't judge you or call you stupid. You could be a girl who punched harder than any boy, and he wouldn't get scared, because he looked at the person you were beyond that. There were worse things in life than being friends with Cloud Strife. She'd never realised until that moment, and suddenly she understood what Master Zangan had been getting at. The decision about where her life was headed was entirely hers. Not even he could make it for her.

"I think I'd like to be a Royal Guard too."

"Really?"

"Uh-huh."

Cloud had nodded vigorously. "You'd make it, easily. You're the best of the best already."

"No I'm not," she'd protested, but blushed at the compliment.

The Cloud of today wouldn't pay her any compliments. It was as if all the softness had been burned out of him, leaving him traumatised and barren of any emotions except bad ones. Still, Tifa couldn't help but think the old Cloud was still in there somewhere – the boy who had sat for hours with her on that well, and supported her every step of the way in training. You couldn't just remake a person into someone else without even a _little_ of the real them remaining.

Right?

She wouldn't let herself believe otherwise. She _couldn't_.

She couldn't lose him again. She couldn't let him go off to face … whatever it was he'd gone off to face. Not alone. Not this time.

But Cloud was far stronger than her now. What could she possibly do to help him? She already knew he wouldn't allow himself to be dragged back to Traverse Town while Sephiroth was still out there, which meant if she was to do anything, it had to be on Cloud's terms. Cloud was a warrior now. His terms relied on strength and fighting, which had been her forte until _he got so much stronger than her and didn't need her anymore_.

Well if Cloud had gotten stronger, then she'd just have to get stronger too.

Merlin's house always smelled of damp and old incense, plus whatever magic he'd recently cast. Tonight it reeked of lemons. Tifa wondered what kind of magic could be called 'citrus fresh'. Probably nothing she could possibly predict. A spell to bring about the apocalypse probably smelled like fresh-baked cookies. One thing she'd learned in the last few years was that magic rarely followed the rules you thought it should, and liked to be as inappropriate as possible. Sort of like life, really.

Merlin wasn't in. Well, fine; that actually worked to her advantage. She doubted he would've given his permission for this anyway, and she would've hated to hurt him if she didn't have to. His absence was especially fortunate, since he trusted in his own reputation and the underground location of his house to deter thieves, instead of setting up elaborate security measures. That meant she could get this over with fast. Maybe she could still catch up to Cloud if she hurried.

Now, if only Merlin had been as helpful labelling his potions as he was bragging about them and leaving his doors unlatched –

"Tifa? What are you doing?"

Tifa froze. _I guess it's not going to be as easy to follow Cloud as I thought._

She tightened her stomach muscles and dropped into a ready stance. Her body knew what to do, even if she'd been neglecting her training while piecing her mind and emotions back together. It was a thin comfort.

She clenched her fists.

Whirled.

Ran headlong.

_Then again, since when was __**anything**__ ever easy for us?_

* * *

Aerith didn't know Cloud Strife all that well while they were living in Radiant Garden. She'd barely known Leon, either, and some days wondered whether she knew him any better now.

In truth, there were days when she wondered whether it would have been easier if she'd been taken by the Heartless like all the other healers. They didn't have anything to worry anymore; their suffering was over. Then she realised what she was thinking and gave herself a good talking-to about being so negative. She was alive, and so were the people who, whether she'd known them before or not before, were precious to her _now_. That was all that really mattered.

Wasn't it?

_Yes. The past is done and the future isn't written yet. The present is the important bit._

Everybody had scars. It was how you dealt with them, and how well you carried on afterwards that counted.

Cloud had more scars on his mind than Aerith had ever come across. Not even Leon had so many. Not even Cid, with his memories of the war to add to those they all carried about the end of the Garden. Cloud's mind was lumpy with old wounds, some repaired, but most not. Aerith couldn't tell how they'd been inflicted, but the agony must have been immense. A few seemed extra alien, out of synch with his biorhythms and the cadence of his mind when she touched it. The healing of the body was inextricably linked with the mind, which meant all healers had a degree of empathy. It was stronger in some than others. Aerith wasn't a true telepath or clairvoyant, but she knew when something felt wrong. The wounds on Cloud's mind had felt as if they should have belonged to other people, but there hadn't been time to figure out the details before he took off.

Whenever she healed someone, Aerith made a connection with their thoughts, memories and emotions. From that day onwards a fine psychic thread connected her to whoever she's worked on. It didn't serve much of a purpose unless they needed healing again, whereupon it was much easier for her to find their injuries and stimulate their body's natural healing processes to work faster than normal. Healing was a blend of magic and extrasensory perception that only those with the right _kind_ of mind could learn. You could train to be a Royal Guard, or a law enforcer, or a pilot. You were born a healer.

She stood in the little bedroom Cloud had occupied until this evening. It still smelled of him. The bandages she'd used to bind the gashes on his belly were gone, but the roll they'd come off was still on the bedside table. She picked it up, turning it over in her hands like it might offer some sort of explanation.

"You were so badly hurt," she murmured. "But you healed up. You would've healed whether I helped you or not. Maybe not as fast, but you would've done it, if the shock and blood loss hadn't killed you first."

His ribs had been exposed. Just a couple, but she'd seen the gleam of bone when Leon dragged her to the abandoned church in town, where Cloud had unexpectedly crashed through the roof out of a clear night sky. What kind of person could sustain that kind of damage and still be alive? The fall alone would have killed a normal person, and then there were those awful, awful wounds. What kind of person could inflict those? There had been _finger-marks_ around the edges, as if after cutting him open someone had attempted to gut him with their bare hands; peeling back Cloud's flesh and cracking open his ribcage to get at the heart within.

She had sat here, in this tiny room at the very top of their house, for most of the past three days. Since she'd never completed her healer training, Aerith's abilities were unrefined. It took her a long time to complete more than simple tasks – sprains, cuts, minor broken bones and the like. She tried her best, but got tired quickly. Cloud's injuries had demanded even more of her power than usual, and after each session she had all but collapsed into sleep to recuperate herself.

And then, at the end of the second day, she'd opened her eyes to find his were already open. He stared down at her from the bed.

"Why are you on the floor?"

As far as first questions went, it wasn't what she'd expected.

"You have the only bed."

"You don't even have a mattress."

"You're the patient. You've got it. Besides, hard surfaces are supposed to be good for the spine."

He'd turned his face to the ceiling, blinked at it, and then at last muttered, "Where am I?"

"Traverse Town."

"Where's that?"

"I'm not sure what you mean."

"I shouldn't be here."

"You were badly hurt."

"I shouldn't _be_ here."

Aerith had pushed herself onto her knees and leaned up to him. His bandages had been pulled aside, presumably by Cloud himself. She was already able to see the pink flesh of new skin that should have taken weeks to even scab over. The contusions on his arms were almost completely gone, and his black eye had faded to a queasy yellow. Even the clumps of missing scalp were already growing new hair.

"Where should you be?" she'd asked softly, trying to calm him. Rapid self-healer or not, he was still her patient, and one of the first things you learned as a trainee was that your patient was your responsibility no matter what.

"Where the greatest darkness lurks."

For a second Aerith had flashed back to Radiant Garden as she'd last seen it. Her entire body stiffened.

Cloud had turned his head to look at her. Then he'd sat up, wincing, and tried to pull himself back to the headboard. He'd let out a pained noise and flopped back. Milliseconds later, giving no indication anything was wrong, he'd said, "You need to rest."

She'd almost laughed out loud. "So do you. We can talk later."

"There's no time for talk."

"Is that a cryptic message of some sort? Because I warn you, I'm really not in the right frame of mind to be decoding those. Good for me or not, my back aches from those floorboards, I still feel bad from using too much energy earlier, Leon is going to be along any minute to ask me about your progress and not-so-subtly push me to speed up your recovery, and even though food might make me throw up, my stomach thinks my throat has been cut and is doing impressions of a growling dog. So if you can be clearer, I'd much prefer it."

Cloud had blinked at her. Then he had shifted over a few inches. "Lie down. Get some rest. I'll speak to … Leon." He'd sounded out the name as two separate and distinct syllables. Then he'd shaken his head, muttered something under his breath, and rolled over to face away from her.

Aerith, exhausted and in no mood to sleep on the floor a second longer, had nonetheless hesitated. Cloud's back was narrower than Leon's, but he had a wiry strength that was clear to the naked eye. He was short and blond, but his body was almost pure muscle, and he wasn't in the least bit fey – nothing at all like the polite, overly apologetic boy she'd seen a handful of times before, in their other life The idea of lying down next to this grown-up version sparked off things inside that hadn't surfaced once in all the times she'd shared a bed with Leon, Tifa and Yuffie. It had scared her a little.

But her exhaustion had been crushing. Warily, and keeping her back to his, she'd eased herself onto the bed and fallen into a deep and dreamless sleep. When she'd awoken, Leon had been and gone, and Cloud had been sitting up as though there had never been any problem with his abdominal muscles – the ones she had seen hacked to little more than strips of red meat by whatever had tried to turn his organs into cutlets.

"You're awake."

"How could you tell?"

"Your breathing changed."

"And the facts my eyes are open and I'm talking to you weren't clues?" Her impudence had surprised her. She wasn't usually so cheeky. That was Yuffie's forte.

Cloud had stared impassively at her. "You're Aerith."

"Yes."

"Leon told me about you."

"He did? Nice things, I hope."

He'd grunted, as if this wasn't for him to judge. The Cloud she first met would have blushed, but not now. Now his blood ran too cool to show embarrassment. Aerith had wondered why that made her so _sad_. It wasn't as if she had a history with him, the way Leon and Tifa did. There was no real reason why she wanted him to think nice things about her, or even to think about her at all.

The door banged open. She startled, dropping the roll of bandages and snapping abruptly back into present.

"Aerith! Tifa beat up Squall, an' stole Cid's Gummi Ship, an' robbed Merlin's house, an' went off in the rain after Cloud, an' -" Yuffie ran out of air and sucked in a new lungful.

Aerith took the opportunity to butt in. "Tifa did _what_?"

"She punched Leon. Like, _really_ hard. He's not crying or nuthin', but I think she might've broken his jaw. He was asleep for a while. Knocked out. But I didn't think he was dead or nuthin', because I'm not stupid, and I _so_ didn't cry like a baby when I found him on the floor looking all … not-dead."

Aerith shook her head. Unlike the boys or Yuffie, Tifa _had_ been her friend before the Garden's destruction. She couldn't imagine Tifa doing the things Yuffie was saying. Tifa was scarily good at what she'd been trained to do, both by her original martial arts teacher, Master Zangan, and as a cadet. She was also very principled about how she used her skills. She had never bullied anyone even though she could kick their butts all the way to Resplendia and back without breaking a sweat, and sometimes seemed almost embarrassed when she did run across bullying and had to put a top to it. Tifa had what a lot of people wished for and had to make up in hard slog: talent. Leon did too, but Aerith had felt much better thinking Tifa was out there with him tonight.

And out with Cloud.

Once again, his pale face and bluer-than-blue eyes popped into her mind. She shook the picture away, but the faintly disturbing fizzle in her tummy kept fizzling.

Aerith knew she was no fighter. She could do a few defensive moves that Tifa and Leon had taught her, but her gift was healing. It was difficult to reconcile that with the kind of aggression you needed to punch someone in the face. There was a superstition that any healer who killed someone in combat instantly lost their ability to heal. Aerith didn't know if that was true or just hokum spread amongst gullible trainees, but it didn't change the fact she was no good at fighting.

Traditionally, each healer corps was assigned a bodyguard, and those who struck out alone to become itinerant medics had one all to themselves. Healers were neutral. Nobody was _supposed_ to attack them, but it never paid to assume too much when you were out in the big wide world beyond Radiant Garden.

Or at least that was how it had been before. Briefly, Aerith wondered whether Resplendia, Wutai and the Dazzle Islands even existed anymore. Then she decided she was better off not knowing – especially since the former Crown Princess of Wutai was standing in front of her in threadbare shorts and tee-shirt donated by sympathetic Traverse Towners.

"I thought you went to fetch her so Leon wasn't out on the cliff all alone."

Yuffie looked contrite. Or as much as she ever did. "Um, well, I couldn't find her, so …"

"You went after him yourself," Aerith finished. "So how did you know she punched him?"

"That came after. Cloud's gone, and Tifa's taken the Highwind to follow him. She was, like, _stealing_ stuff from Merlin's, but Leon caught her and she WHOPPED him good." Yuffie threw a shadow punch so violent it spun her around on one foot and made her stagger. "I found him on the floor, because he's mean and ran ahead of me on his stupid long legs."

Aerith pressed her fingers to her temple. This was all too much. "Have you spoken to Cid?"

"Uh, no …"

"Then fetch him. I'll tend to Leon. You bring Cid to Merlin's. He'll know what to do."

Yuffie looked dubious, but Aerith stayed firm. Cid had been a fixture since he rescued them from the crumbling Garden. He was foul-mouthed and worse-tempered, but he was a constant, and for the longest time now he'd been the authority figure in their lives. Aerith didn't like to question how suitable he was as role model for an impressionable little girl like Yuffie, but at least they knew Cid would never abandon or neglect them. He was a tough guy who'd survived more than his fair share of conflicts. He had drawn on his wartime experiences to help deal with losing everything except a handful of kids he was suddenly solely responsible for. For the most part, he'd done a pretty good job. They were alive, in a relatively safe place, had a roof over their heads, and knew where their next meal was coming from.

Yes, Aerith was certain, Cid would know what to do.

* * *

There were some days Cid considered just locking his door and drinking until alcoholic poisoning kicked in. As far as ways to die went, he could think of worse.

She had taken his ship.

She had taken his damn _ship_.

He suppressed the urge to groan, hit, or throw something. He'd given up kicking long ago. The strain it put on his bad knee wasn't worth the visceral satisfaction. Besides, not even kicking the crap out of that bloody wizard was going to bring his ship back.

His Highwind. His _baby_. The Gummi Ship he had built since King Mickey, thinking the neutrality of the place would help them recover from their ordeal, dropped them off in Traverse Town three years ago. The product of sleepless nights, long hours of going around in circles in his mind, wondering what the hell he was doing and working out his aggression on something that could take it. The Highwind had heard him rage, witnessed him with his head in his hands as he worried over those fucking kids, seen him finally settle to the life he'd built for them all, and not said a word to anyone. He had cared for that ship like it was a person.

And Tifa had stolen it.

The Highwind had been one of the reasons Cid hadn't gone stark raving bonkers in the face of all his grief, frustration and anger after Lord Ansem sold his people down the river. And, of course, there was the unexpectedness of Cid suddenly becoming some sort of freaking _father figure_ to a bunch of mealy-mouthed brats with enough emotional traumas between them to keep a newly qualified shrink happy until retirement. Some days Cid had spent sunup to sundown in his workshop, pottering about with blueprints and tools because they were easier to understand than innocent minors who'd witnessed murders close-up.

He could have just left them in someone else's care. Right back at the beginning, the king had offered to find someone else for the job.

"We have plenty of people willing to take care of them," he'd said in that weirdly high-pitched voice of his. "Disneyland is at the forefront of containing this current outbreak of Heartless, so it's not safe for them to stay here in their current condition, but there are worlds where they can go to convalesce. You too, of course."

Cid hadn't been able to argue that point. He'd been beaten pretty badly in his fight against Braig. Damn, that man had been a dirty fighter. Still, he'd gotten what he deserved in the end. What was it called – karma? Braig had gotten his just desserts, and then some. Cid had seen the Heartless yank out the guy's heart and turn him into one of them, just like they'd done to all Lord Ansem's acolytes.

He had also seen Cloud Strife and General Sephiroth being absorbed by the darkness. He'd thought them both irretrievable and pulled Leon – still Squall then – out of there to save his life. Now it turned out Cid had called it wrong. Badly wrong.

Strife was alive but majorly fucked up, Leon was doing his guilt trip thing again, and Tifa had fucked off to parts unknown to try and make up for not saving her friend the last time. Cid hated what guilt did to good people. He'd seen it before, after the civil war. Guilt was like cancer – survivor guilt in particular.

_Why did I survive when my friend didn't? Why couldn't I save everyone? Why did innocents have to die so meaninglessly? Why, why, why?_

No kid should ever have to ask those questions. Cid would despise Ansem until the end of his days for putting these brats through that kind of crap so young. Some of them may have signed up to be warriors, but this … nothing like this. Yuffie had been _five _for fuck's sake! Five years old and literally swimming in blood when she fetched up against Quistis Trepe's corpse. Cid wasn't sure who he hated more, Ansem or Braig. He couldn't do comfort for five year olds. The very thought petrified him.

And despite this, and his awkwardness at any kind of touchy-feely-connect-with-your-emotions crap, Cid still couldn't bear to leave the kids when King Mickey offered him an escape route. Something about these stupid brats had cried out to him, and he'd found himself assuring the king he could handle looking after them even though he'd never even kept a girlfriend long-term. Fatherhood was so off his radar it existed on an entirely different magnetic spectrum. Yet he'd ignore that, instead pointing out to King Mickey that he'd overseen a lot more than four kids when he managed the training programme for the Radiant Garden Air Force Cadets.

"Are you sure?" the king had asked.

"Sure as shit stinks. Uh, your majesty."

King Mickey had winced, but nodded. "They've been through a lot. They'll need time and space to recover. I have just the place – a hub world rather like the one you left in appearance, so acclimatisation shouldn't be too difficult …"

Nonetheless, despite Cid's assurances, King Mickey had placed Merlin with them as a sort of backup and hotline to Disney Castle. It was supposedly for help with major end-of-the-world crises, but Cid knew Mickey actually meant for him to go to Merlin if he ever needed help with the mundane crises of raising children and teenagers – although Cid reckoned Merlin was even worse at childcare than himself. The stupid wizard had no sense priority.

Case in point: the bearded twit was whinging about some missing bits of pottery while Cid's entire fucking Gummi Ship had been stolen!

"Just because the items taken from my home were smaller," he bristled when Cid told him he was overreacting, "does _not_ mean they are in any way less significant than your flying death-trap."

Cid ground his teeth. "Watch it, windbag."

"She took my experimental extra-strength potion, you fool! It was only in the beta stage of testing! Do you know how dangerous that is? If she swallows it, anything could happen to her."

"If she can't handle the controls of the Highwind I know exactly what'll happen to her," Cid muttered. _She'll end up buried in the side of a mountain, or lost in the spaces between worlds, or with an empty fuel-tank in the middle of a meteor storm, or –_ He shook his head to dislodge some of the more gruesome images. "You called through to Disney Castle yet?"

"Of course. The king is, unfortunately, not in residence at the moment. Some sort of quest that demanded his utmost attention. Those arise from time to time, you understand, and they really are most unavoidable. However, the queen assures me they'll have someone address this problem forthwith. Two children can't have gotten far. It should be easy to retrieve them."

"Says you." Neither Tifa nor Cloud were just children. Cid remembered the look in Strife's eyes. That kid took 'fucked up' to a whole new level. And as for Tifa …

She had nearly broken completely once before. It chilled Cid to recall it. Losing Strife had been part of what drove her to the edge. She held herself responsible for what had happened to him, and to the rest of Radiant Garden – as if she could have known or prevented what Ansem, Braig and that bunch of snake-tongued loonies were plotting. Still, trying to tell that to a teenaged girl who'd seen her mentor decapitated and then been chased out of her _world_ – not just her home, not just her town, but entire freaking _world_ – by monsters worse than any nightmare ... let's just say Cid would rather have strapped raw meat to himself and gone jogging through the dragon stables with all the doors open.

Tifa was strong. It had taken her a long time to crack after they first landed, but when she did she nearly hadn't been able to put herself back together again. On her own, she wouldn't have managed it. She would've just stayed in the dark place she'd fallen into, crying for the family she'd lost and all the hopes for the future she'd had dashed. Cid knew it was only thanks to her friends that she'd clawed her way back to the surface so she could breathe clean air again. Leon, Aerith, even little Yuffie; they had reached out to Tifa, grabbed handfuls of whatever they could, and hadn't let go until she was back with them.

Cid would never be able to explain how vulnerable watching these kids grow up made him feel. Only three years together and already the changes were obvious. It had come as a huge shock to him, to discover that something as simple as his budding affection for them ensured he was a far easier target for worry than he used to be. There was a time he couldn't have given a rat's nadgers whether his recruits were 'emotionally secure', and would have dismissed all psychobabble as hogwash, as long as they could fly without crashing. Yet if surviving the betrayal of Radiant Garden had made him realise how fleeting the nature of life was, looking after these kids had honed that knowledge to a lethal sharpness.

"She won't come back."

Merlin looked up. "Excuse me?"

"Lockhart. She won't come back, even if they catch her. They probably _won't_ be able to catch the Highwind, but even if by some miracle they do, she won't come back without Strife. If they bring her back to Traverse Town she'll just find some other way to go after him. As we've discovered, she's a resourceful brat, and an intelligent one, which is worse. Never could stand a smart-ass with a purpose."

Merlin watched him carefully for a moment. "You think she stole my potion so she could bring him back with her?"

"Maybe. Maybe she just got it into her head to help Strife fight Sephiroth so he'll come back willingly and won't bugger off again. I ain't a teenager, and I ain't a girl, so I couldn't say for certain what goes on in the head of one, but from what I know of Lockheart …" He left the sentence hanging. "These kids, all they think they've got is each other."

"That's not true –"

"You and I know that, fucktard, but to them it's a big scary universe, and the only ones they can really rely on and trust are each other. They're connected. You think Strife doesn't come into that, you're making an even bigger mistake than …" Cid shook off the unpleasant thoughts and memories. "Point is, Lockheart was willing to break all the taboos on this one – she hurt, stole and deserted her friends. She busted up Leonhart's gunblade so bad that even if I fix it, that thing will probably never fire shells again without exploding in his fucking face." Personally, Cid would have loved to think this would force Leon to give up the bloody thing, but he knew the kid never would. The best he could hope for was to rejig the firing mechanism so it aided instead of hindered him when he fought. "I'll bet she knew she was gonna be hurting the others, too, but she did it anyway. Strikes me the only reason she'd do that is to bring one lost lamb back into the fold." He jammed his hands in his pockets. "Bad actions to justify a good outcome. She knew they'd understand. She knew she'd be forgiven."

Merlin snorted softly into his moustache. "I would never have believed anyone could term that boy a 'lamb'."

Cid shrugged. "Stranger things have happened." Him getting this gig, for one. Him being any good at it, for another, although the jury was still so far out on that one they might never come back into the courtroom.

Damn it. Kids sure did test you. Good thing he'd never spawned any of his own.

Cid took a deep breath. Held it. Let it out. Hoped it cooled the hot coals of his anger enough that he sounded sincere. "If she's gonna be out there where the danger is … I guess I'd rather she was in the Highwind than in some crapped out, pansy-ass ship built by someone who doesn't know a wrench from a carburettor."

Merlin watched him. Cid held his jaw absolutely straight. A muscle in his cheek jumped.

"I wonder," Merlin said thoughtfully, "why is it you keep yourself distant and call these children by their surnames, when you're obviously so attached to them?"

"Go die in the corner, bastard."

To himself, and to the open sky outside his now-empty workshop, Cid murmured: _Stay safe, kid. Do what you gotta do, and then come the hell home, okay?_

* * *

_To Be Continued …_

* * *


	3. Avenger, Healer, Princess & Mechanic

* * *

**3. The Avenger, the Healer, the Princess and the Mechanic**

* * *

"Squall?" Yuffie crept through the open door on cat-feet. "Aerith?"

Aerith looked up, but Leon kept his eyes on the carpet. His posture was coiled so tight he looked like he might drill through the floor with his feet at any moment. Aerith had done her best to heal him, but she was tired and he was still all bruised. Tifa had indeed broken his jaw and loosened some of his teeth, as well as cut his lip and eyebrow. She hit really hard – like an Excelsior Transporter XII F-Type Craft, Cid said, which meant nothing to Yuffie, but sounded really cool.

Yuffie often wished she could hit like Tifa, but her fists were so tiny they never seemed to do any damage. She could just about leave an impression in dough. In a fight she had to get creative with throwing stuff instead. Even Tifa was surprised at some of the things Yuffie had used as missiles before.

Except that Tifa had gone away, and wouldn't be surprised at anything Yuffie picked. Not even her nose.

"Yuffie, it's late," Aerith said. "Why are you still out of bed?"

"Like I'm really gonna be able to sleep tonight?"

Aerith's mouth thinned, but she didn't say anything.

Yuffie took this as an invitation and bounced across the floor to land on the couch beside her.

Aerith automatically raised her arm and placed it around Yuffie's shoulders, drawing her in for a half-hug instead of scolding and insisting it was bedtime. She smelled of liniment and washing powder, and also vaguely of the bread she'd baked earlier, before she knew their extra dinner guest wouldn't be around to eat it. Yuffie loved the way Aerith smelled. It was a comforting, homey kind of smell – nothing at all like gunblade oil and dirt.

Leon was in one of the two threadbare armchairs, the other unarguably reserved for Cid even when he wasn't there. One of its arms was burned where he'd fallen asleep and dropped his cigarette. Leon's had an indent in the seat cushion from a hundred previous butt-cheeks.

All their stuff was second-hand. That used to bother Yuffie, back when her idea of a good outfit had ruffles, a tiara and oodles of pink, but now she kind of liked having other people's cast offs. New stuff was shiny and cool, but old stuff was comfortable and welcoming, and had stories in all the folds and creases. Besides, weren't _they_ all cast-offs? With that in mind it made sense for their stuff to be cast-offs too. It was a deep thought for her eight-year-old brain and she was very proud of it.

"Tifa's really gone, isn't she?"

Aerith hesitated before answering, "She's gone to find Cloud." As if this made it all okay.

"Can't we go too?"

"No, I don't think so."

"But Cloud was cool!"

"I don't think that's a good idea, Yuffie."

"Why not?"

"Tifa and Cloud may have gone somewhere very dangerous."

"Like that matters? I'm a super duper ninja, remember? Anything gets in my way, I'll just smoke it. Like, _pow_!" She smacked her hands together for emphasis.

Aerith's face twisted up for a second before smoothing into her usual expression. "I'm sure you could, but –"

"No, she couldn't." Leon's voice was harsh, like someone had sandpapered his throat. His words were slightly garbled by his fat lip, but not so he couldn't be understood.

"Leon -" Aerith started.

"If she ran across General Sephiroth, and he's anything like Cloud now, she'd be dead in a heartbeat. Probably less."

Yuffie sat up. "Would not!"

"Yuffie." Aerith forced her back down. This time her arm felt less like a hug and more like a restraint. "Leon, I know you're upset, but you can't –"

"Can't what? Can't tell it like it is? Can't be realistic?" He finally raised his face. Yuffie expected it to be all pained and yuck, but instead it was even smoother than Aerith's. Leon looked like a glass waiting to be filled with Expression Liquid. "Can't _blame myself_? Is that what you were going to say?"

"You do it a lot," Aerith said bluntly. "Especially when it's impossible to justify blaming yourself. This was Tifa's decision. And Cloud's," she added in a slightly softer tone. "We may not agree with them, but that still doesn't give us the right to take away their ability to choose for themselves what they want to do with their lives. We just have to be here for them when they need us. _If_ they need us," she amended. "They may not. They may be back tomorrow."

"Or they may never come back. They may be dead by tomorrow."

Yuffie stiffened. Tifa not come home? Somehow, even though it was a perfectly plausible thing, she'd not even considered it until now. Tifa was one tough chica. She was everything Yuffie wanted to be – she could kick like a donkey, punch hard enough to lay a grown man flat, and knew six different ways to knock you out using just her pinkie. Plus, she was just plain _nice_. Yuffie knew people had gotten easily frustrated with her in the beginning, when she was still a weepy, waily, sparkly and totally pathetic pink princess who couldn't even tie her own shoelaces. Still, Tifa had always been kind, even when she was going off the deep end herself. Tifa used to sit up nights with Yuffie, when Aerith was too exhausted, and tell her stories. Fairytales from Radiant Garden were very different than Wutaian fairytales. Telling about how handsome princes always rescued their princesses and saved the day seemed to give Tifa as much comfort as Yuffie.

The idea that Tifa might not come home from her adventure with Cloud-the-handsome-Not-Prince …

"You're wrong," Yuffie said, tears in her eyes at the very _thought_.

She genuinely couldn't remember much about the bad stuff that happened in Radiant Garden, but she knew from her hazy, shadow-filled nightmares that it had been awful. _Beyond_ awful. Her dad had been taken from her back then. Even though she knew that, she still woke up calling for him sometimes. Gradually over the last three years, the name on her lips had morphed into those of her friends, but there were odd times – when she'd exhausted herself so much during the day that she sank into the deepest, darkest of sleeps – when she went back to being a little girl who wanted her daddy to come and make it all better, but knew he couldn't because he wasn't there anymore. That was when Yuffie needed her new family most.

Tifa had to come back. She _had to_.

Leon stared at Yuffie. Then he looked away as if ashamed – pretty much his default frame of mind these days. Whatever. It was a relief to see _any_ emotion on his face at that moment.

Yuffie still trembled with her own fizzing emotions. "Take it back. Tifa's gonna come home. Maybe not soon, but that's okay, because she _will_ come back. She's tough. She can take care of herself, and if you think any different and jinx her then you … you're just …" She searched her brain for a suitable word. "You're a _bastard_, Squall."

"Yuffie!" Aerith exclaimed.

It was ridiculous, really, being shocked by a curse word, given their situation and the kind of future they faced. Yuffie knew Aerith didn't like the way she insisted on learning how to fight. She thought Yuffie was too young, but Yuffie knew, deep down in her bone marrow, and in the seeds of a childhood in Wutai, that it was never too early to learn how to protect yourself by taking out the threat before it became one. If the Heartless ever came back, she'd be ready to kick their butts into next week.

Leon stared at the carpet some more. Then, instead of apologising, he muttered, "Tifa took matters into her own hands. She took an active approach. We need to do the same."

Aerith swivelled from frowning at Yuffie to frowning at him. "What are you saying?" She sounded unsure, as if this turn of events wasn't entirely unexpected, but wasn't entirely welcome, either.

"We've spent the last three years just sitting around feeling sorry for ourselves. We let the adults choose where we went, because we thought they knew best. We let King Mickey pick Traverse Town We let him set Alison Goodman Merlin to guard us. We let them all take over our recovery without asking us what we wanted. Well, now it's time to take matters into our own hands. I'm sick of regrets. Cloud and Tifa had the right idea: don't just sit around waiting to feel better, get off your ass and _do_ something about it."

"We have been doing something about it," Aerith said quietly.

"Just surviving isn't doing something about it. It's avoiding the issue. You've heard Merlin's reports to Disney Castle lately. The Heartless didn't stay in our world, and they didn't die off when they ran out of people there. Cloud said he met some on his travels. It was one of the few things he _did_ admit about what he's been up to. I don't know about you, but I can't just sit on my hands if there might be people out there at risk from those things. I do _not _want any more tragedy on my conscience. I couldn't save Radiant Garden." It was obvious these words cut into Leon's tongue like little tin tacks, but he kept on talking. "No way in hell am I letting what happened to us happen to anyone else. Not if I can help it."

"What if you can't help it?" Aerith asked, playing devil's advocate.

"I'll find a way to help it. Tifa did. She did what I should've," he muttered bitterly.

"Leon –"

"No, Aerith. I've had enough of licking my wounds. Can you honestly say you'd want others to go through this kind of … of _hell_, if we could prevent it?"

Slowly, Aerith shook her head. "You know I couldn't. But Leon, we're not exactly an army, and we don't have many resources." She waved a hand at their surroundings, as if the shabby house and its shabbier contents said more than words could about what they had to work with. "King Mickey is already fighting the Heartless, and even with all his magic he's not winning, he's just holding them off."

"Which is why any help is better than none," Leon shot back. "You're not going to talk me out of it, Aerith. If I have to learn to fly a gummi ship, I'll become the best pilot there is. If I have to learn map-reading to get from star to star, I'll do it. If there's a magical artefact out there that might help, I'll find it. If there's a warrior who could make a difference, I'll drag them to the king and make them see what the rest of us already know: that it can't go on this way, and that if we're to have any future worth living, we all need to fight the Heartless until there aren't any left."

"You've obviously given this a lot of thought," Aerith said after he'd finished.

"I don't want any more Radiant Gardens," Leon said almost inaudibly. "Or any more Clouds."

Aerith fell silent.

Yuffie looked between the two of them. She could sense something in the room, like an extra person, and it, like her, was waiting to see what happened next.

Outside, thunder rolled. It was like hearing as giant iron cube tumble down the stairway of the gods; a cracking, thudding crash that would have made Princess Yuffie hide under the bedclothes. But this Yuffie, the girl she had become living alongside these people, wasn't afraid of the storm. Princess Yuffie had gone away three years ago, and the Great Ninja Yuffie had taken her place.

And the Great Ninja Yuffie wasn't fluffy, or pink, or pathetic.

Aerith didn't try to stop her when she got off the couch and went to perch on the arm of Leon's chair. Even though she knew he'd hate it, Yuffie wrapped her arms around him and squeezed tight. She half-expected him to push her off, but he didn't. He just sat, rigid as a stone, and allowed her to hug him, accepting but not returning it. He wasn't exactly a huggy sort of person.

"_I_ think it's a great idea," she said stoutly. "And I'm behind you all the way, Squall. We'll kick the Heartless' butts together, and be a super-special, super-incredible, super-amazing team."

"This is too dangerous for you, Yuffie –"

"I told you before; you don't get to boss me about just because you're older. I want to help fight the Heartless. And don't tell me I'm just a kid! I want a chance at the things that took my dad's heart."

Leon went even quieter than before, if that was possible. "All right," he said eventually "But on one condition. When it comes to fighting the Heartless, you do exactly as I say and follow my orders to the letter. Are we clear? If I tell you to keep out of it, you keep out of it; if I tell you to get involved, you get involved, and no arguments either way. I'm the one who trained to be a Royal Guard, and I _do_ have seniority, which means what I say goes."

Yuffie wasn't clear on what 'having seniority' was, but as long as it didn't mean he bossed her about just because he was older, she was fine with that. Being told what to do because the bossy-boots actually knew what he was doing was a different kettle of fish. She trusted Leon. He might be weird sometimes, and blame himself for stuff he couldn't help, but Yuffie had faith that he would always do what he set out to do. If he said he was going to beat up the Heartless, then the Heartless would soon be crying for _their_ mommies and daddies too.

The front door banged open. "Holy crap, who died?" Cid asked, only half-joking when he saw their faces and nearly choked on the tension in the room. "Oh fuck. Who died?"

But nobody had died. Quite the reverse, in fact.

"Hey, Cid!" Yuffie said brightly. "Guess what?"

"What?" Cid asked carefully. He'd been caught before by the unpleasant consequences of her asking that question.

She beamed at him. "We're gonna save the universe. Isn't that cool?"

* * *

_**Fin.**_

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**A/N****:** This story thread will be continued in an upcoming fic that takes place after the events of _Kingdom Hearts II._ It will centre around what happens when an old enemy reappears in the lives of Leon and his friends – someone they never thought they'd never meet again. While they try to rebuild Radiant Garden, repair damaged and broken bonds of friendship and more, and create a new life out of the ashes of their old one, they also find themselves fighting to survive and save each other once more when that old enemy begins to literally take over the mind of one of their group. What do you do when saving your friend may mean killing them? Find out in _Wolf at the Door_.

When I first began _The Most Dangerous Game_, I never knew I was starting an ambitious project as this has become. I hope people are still enjoying it and will drop me a line to say if they are (or even if they're not). Feedback is the food of the gods that makes Ambrosia look like cold takeout.

I hope this sufficed, Thien.

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